Marcia Falk
Marcia Falk (born September 20, 1946) is an American poet, academic, liturgist, painter, and translator.Lucille Lang Day, Marcia Falk, Encyclopedia, Jewish Women's Archive. Web, July 26, 2016. Life Youth Falk was born in New York City and grew up in a Conservative Jewish home in New Hyde Park, Long Island. Her mother Frieda Goldberg Falk, a teacher, spoke Yiddish fluently and attended Hebrew school as a child at her Orthodox synagogue, the only girl to do so. Her mother's influence helped inspire Falk's feminist spiritual vision and commitment to creating nonpatriarchal Judaism. Falk took classes as an adolescent in Hebrew and Jewish studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She earned a B.A. in philosophy magna cum laude from Brandeis University, followed by a Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from Stanford University. Falk was a Fulbright Scholar in Hebrew and Bible literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and returned 4 years later as a Postdoctoral Fellow. Career As a university professor, Falk taught Hebrew and English literature, Jewish studies and creative writing at Stanford University, Binghamton University, and the Claremont Colleges. In 2001 she was the Priesand Visiting Professor of Jewish Women’s Studies at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. . Falk is a life member of the Art Students League of New York, where she studied painting as a child and adolescent. Her painting "Gilead Apples" was used as the cover illustration for her book The Days Between: Blessings, Poems, and Directions of the Heart for the Jewish High Holiday Season. She has also created a series of mizrachs featuring oil pastel paintings accompanied by texts from her volume of Hebrew and English prayers, The Book of Blessings. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Choice, Moment, Poet & Critic, Poetry Society of America Magazine, Her Face in the Mirror: Jewish Women on Mothers and Daughters (Beacon Press, 1994), September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond (Etruscan Press, 2002), Voices Within the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets (Avon Books, 1980), and many other magazines and anthologies. She has published three collections of her own poems: My Son Likes Weather, This Year in Jerusalem, and It Is July in Virginia. Falk is also the author of The Spectacular Difference: Selected poems of Zelda, a volume of translations of the Hebrew poetry of 20th-century mystic Zelda Schneerson Mishkovsky, and With Teeth in the Earth: Selected poems of Malka Heifetz Tussman. Falk lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, poet Steven Jay Rood. Writing The Song of Songs: Love lyrics from the Bible, a classic verse translation of the biblical Song of Songs, was published in 1977. Poet Adrienne Rich called Falk's translation "a beautiful and sensual poem in its own right."Brandeis University Press 1996's The Book of Blessings: New Jewish prayers for daily life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival was acclaimed for its nongendered depictions of the divine, replacing traditional masculine terminology for God (i.e., Lord and King) with what Falk calls "new images for divinity Writing in The Women's Review of Books, Judith Plaskow hailed the book's "extraordinarily beautiful prayers," which use "no female images and little feminine grammar. Instead, Falk evokes the sacred as totally immanent in creation, offering an alternative to the whole notion of God as male or female person." The Days Between: Blessings, poems, and directions of the heart for the Jewish high holiday season, published in 2014, takes a similar approach to the High Holy Day season, recreating the holidays’ key prayers and rituals from an inclusive perspective. Rabbi David Teutsch of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College praised the author for demonstrating "a poet’s gift for words that open inner vistas, a liturgist’s capacity to speak to the universal, a scholar’s insight into Jewish traditions and texts, and a contemporary feminist’s fresh vision." Publications Poetry *''The Flower Woman''. Binghampton, NY: Bellevue Press, 1976. *''Conversation between Poets''. Binghampton, NY: Bellevue Press, 1977. *''Learning to Play Basketball''. Binghampton, NY: Bellevue Press, 1978. *''The Household Poems''. Milwaukee, WI: Sackbut Press, 1981. *''This Year in Jerusalem''. Brockport, NY: State Street Press, 1986. *''It is July in Virginia: A poem sequence''. Riverside, CA: Rara Avis Press, 1985. *''My Son Likes Weather''. Non-fiction *''The Book of Blessings: New Jewish prayers for daily life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival''. San Francisco: Harper, 1996. Collected editions *''The Days Between: Blessings, poems, and directions of the heart for the Jewish high holiday season''. Waltham, MA: Brandeis Univerity Press / University Press of New England, 2014. Translated *''The Song of Songs: Love poems from the Bible''. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977 **published in UK as Love Lyrics from the Bible: A translation and literary study of the Song of Songs. Sheffield, UK: Almond, 1982. **also published as The Song of Songs: A new translation and interpretation. San Francisco: Harper, 1990. *Malka Heifetz Tussman, Am I Also You? Berkeley, CA: Tree, 1977. *Malka Heifetz Tussman, With Teeth in the Earth: Selected poems. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1992. *Zelda, The Spectacular Difference: Selected poems. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 2004. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Marcia Falk, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, July 26, 2016. See also Notes *List of U.S. poets References External links ;Poems *[http://marciafalk.com/jerusalem.html Excerpts from This Year in Jerusalem] *[http://marciafalk.com/weather.html Excerpts from My Son Likes Weather] *Marcia Falk at Levure Litteraire (6 poems) ;Books *Marcia Falk at Amazon.com ;About *Marcia Falk at the Jewish Women's Archive *Marcia Falk at the Jewish Virtual Library * Marcia Falk Official website. Category:1946 births Category:Living people Category:People from Berkeley, California Category:Jewish American writers Category:Fulbright Scholars Category:21st-century American poets Category:20th-century American poets Category:20th-century poets Category:20th-century women writers Category:American poets Category:American academics Category:American women writers Category:English-language poets Category:Jewish poets Category:Poets Category:Women poets Category:People from New York City